Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now
In spite of the fact that the domestic pressings of this Richard and Linda Thompson classic from 1974 were mastered by the likes of Kendun and Sterling — two of the greatest mastering houses of all time, — they have never impressed us with their sound quality.
The biggest problems with this record would be obvious to even the casual listener: gritty, spitty vocals; lack of richness; bright tonality; lack of bass; no real space or transparency, etc.
The domestic Island pressings did not do nearly as well in our shootout as the best Island imports, no surprise there as the early UK records were mastered by one of our favorite engineers.
Avoid the Carthage pressings mastered by Sterling. They came in last in our shootout.
The domestic breakdown follows:
Black Island Domestic #1
Black Island Domestic #2
Carthage Domestic recut from 1983, Sterling on both sides
Defending the Indefensible
Hot Stamper Pressings of Art Rock Albums Available Now
The band’s magnum opus, a Colossus of Production to rival the greatest Prog, Psych and Art Rock recordings of all time. (Whew!)
When it comes to Genre Busting Rock I put this album right up at the top of the heap, along with several other landmark albums from the Seventies: Roxy Music’s first, The Original Soundtrack, Crime of the Century, Ambrosia’s first two releases, Fragile, Dark Side of the Moon and a handful of others.
The Seeds Of Love is clearly the band’s masterpiece, and being able to hear it on a White Hot Stamper pressing is nothing short of a THRILL.
I have a long history with this style of Popular Music, stretching all the way back to the early ’70s. I grew up on Bowie, Roxy Music, 10cc, Eno, The Talking Heads, Ambrosia, Peter Gabriel, Supertramp, Yes, Zappa and others, individuals and bands that wanted to play rock music but felt shackled by the constraints of the conventional pop song. Nothing on Sowing the Seeds of Love fits the description of a Conventional Pop Song.
Which albums by The Beatles break all the rules? Side two of Abbey Road and the whole of The White Album, which is why both are Desert Island Discs for me. Can’t get enough of either one.
The Discovery of a Lifetime
When I discovered these arty rock bands in my early twenties I quickly became obsessed with them and remain so to this day.
My equipment was forced to evolve in order to be able to play the scores of challenging recordings issued by these groups and others in the 70s. These albums informed not only my taste in music but the actual stereo I play that music on. I’ve had large dynamic speakers for the last four decades precisely because they do such a good job of bringing to life huge and powerful recordings such as these.
Tears For Fears on this and their previous album continue that tradition of big-as-life and just-as-difficult-to-reproduce records. God bless ’em for it.
Analog Sound
The sound of most copies is aggressive, hard, harsh and thin. What do you expect? The album is recorded digitally and direct metal mastered at Masterdisk.
Most of us analog types put up with the limitations of the sound because we love the music, some of the most moving, brilliantly written and orchestrated psychedelic pop of the last thirty years.
Imagine if the Beatles in their Sgt. Pepper/ Magical Mystery Tour phase kept going in that direction. They very well might have ended up in the neighborhood of Sowing the Seeds of Love.
But wait — the best pressings have smooth, sweet, analog richness and spaciousness I didn’t think was possible for this recording. The bass is full and punchy. When it really starts cooking, such as in the louder, more dynamic sections of Woman in Chains or the title cut, it doesn’t get harsh and abrasive like most copies. It’s got energy and life without making your ears bleed — if you have the system to play it.
This modern album (from 1982, which makes it 40+ years old, but that’s modern in our world) can sound surprisingly good on the right pressing. On most copies, the highs are slightly grainy and can be harsh, not exactly the kind of sound that inspires you to turn your system up good and loud and really get involved in the music. I’m happy to report that both sides here have no such problem – they rock and they sound great loud.
We pick up every clean copy we see of this album, domestic or import, because we know from experience just how good the best pressings can sound. What do the best copies have? REAL dynamics for one. And with those dynamics, you need rock solid bass. Otherwise, the loud portions simply become irritating. (more…)
Hot Stamper Pressings of Classical Masterpieces Available Now
UPDATE 2025
The review you see below was written more than ten years ago.
Having just done another shootout for SR 90209, Dorati’s recording of the two works, The Gayne Ballet and Romeo and Juliet, I can now confirm that there are some stampers that are indeed way too bright.
Side one of a recent copy had a sour midrange. Side two of the same copy was brash and metallic.
As for side two not sounding as good as side one in the older review before, seems we clearly got that wrong, the result, to some degree, of having an inadequate sample size.
Also, we didn’t have as good a stereo as we do now, and we weren’t as good at doing shootouts back then either.
Our Old Review
This side one is truly DEMONSTRATION QUALITY, thanks to its superb low-distortion mastering. It’s yet another exciting Mercury recording. The quiet passages have unusually sweet sound.
This kind of sound is not easy to cut. This copy gets rid of the cutter head distortion and coloration and allows you to hear what the Mercury engineers accomplished.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now
The records being marketed to audiophiles these days may have second- and third-rate sound, but at least they now have good music. That’s progress, right?
It is progress, because this RCA direct to disc recording is the kind of crap that used to qualify as an “audiophile record” when I was starting out in the mid-70s. These records were displayed on the walls of all the hi-fi stores I used to frequent back in the day.
They cost a lot more than regular records did too. Many were pressed in Japan, and I vaguely recall that the retail prices were in the range of $15 to $18. That’s $77 to $92 in today’s money. Can you imagine paying that for a record with such poor sound and music?
The Beatles Medley is particularly misguided. These guys have no idea what to do with the music of The Beatles.
A record such as this clearly belongs in our audiophile hall of shame, which is a general catchall section for the many bad sounding records that have been marketed to audiophiles over the last fifty years. We’ve played and reviewed more than 300 to date, which of course is but a mere fraction of the many thousands of questionable pressings that have been produced since the 70s. There has always been a mid-fi collector market, and no shortage of enterprising types to take advantage of it.
It turns out that many of the most shameful offenders for sound are more recent releases that have only come our way in the last few years. Here are some of their stories.
Drop the needle on Dust in the Wind — here the guitars and vocals are full-bodied and natural, qualities unfortunately in short supply on the typical pressing. (more…)
Two songs in particular make this a Must Own album: Scarborough Fair and The Fool On The Hill. Both of them are given wonderfully original treatments. These songs hold their own against the originals, and that’s saying something.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Psychedelic Rock Recordings Available Now
UPDATE 2026
This commentary originally came out in 2023 I believe. The comments section at the end is a bit of a hoot. Man, there sure are some real wackos in the world of audio.
““It’s magical what they’re doing, recreating these old records,” Fremer said as he swapped out more Electric Recording discs.”
Swapped them out? Anyone with an ounce of respect for Love’s music would have tossed them into the nearest trash bin.
We did a shootout for Love’s Forever Changes earlier this year, and it was our good luck to get hold of a copy of the Electric Recording Company’s pressing of the album in order to see how it would fare against our Gold Label Stereo original LPs.
As you can see from the notes, to say that we could hardly believe what we were hearing clearly understates the depth of our befuddlement.
We simply have no context for a record that sounds as bad as this record sounds. We’ve never heard anything like it, and we’ve played a lot of records in the 37 years we’ve been in business. After critically auditioning thousands upon thousands of pressings in our shootouts, all day every day for the last twenty years, we’ve worn out scores of cartridges and even our Triplanar tonearm.
But this is new ground for us. A quick recap:
You get the picture. What more needs be said? Last year I wrote the following:
Pete Hutchison of The Electric Recording Company makes some of the worst sounding records I have ever played in my life.
If you play me one of his awful records, and don’t tell me who made it, I can judge the record on its merits, the way we judge all records. We test records blindly for precisely this reason. We let the record tell us how well it was made, what it does right and wrong relative to other pressings of the same album, comparing apples to apples.
His records tell me he loves the sound of the murkiest, muddiest vintage tube equipment ever made, and wants every record he produces to have that sound.
In my book that is an egregious case of My-Fi, not Hi-Fi. We wrote about it here.
It’s astonishing to me that anyone takes this guy seriously.
In the Washington Post video, we did a little comparison on camera for two pressings of Quiet Kenny, a record I will have more to say about in Part Two of this commentary. Here is Geoff Edgers’ description in the article of how it all went down.